Clubbers against racism: a woman at Sunday’s protest against the far-right AfD party.
Photograph: Alexander Becher/EPA

As a cavalcade of about 30 music trucks pulsed its way past Berlin’s Victory Column and down 17 Juni Street, and other boats and barges of clubbers rocked on the river Spree, older Berliners were reminded on Sunday of the Love Parade, the techno extravaganza that was launched in the city 30 years ago. In those days, the city still in the throes of enjoying the post-Wall freedom, the event was a vague mix of “Friede, Freude, Eierkuchen” (“peace, joy and pancakes”) with a few drugs thrown in – despite the organisers’ insistence that it was a serious political demonstration (not least as a way of not having to pay for the policing).

Thousands from far right and Berlin's techno scene face off in rival rallies

Read more

This time round, thousands of demonstrators gathered at the weekend for what is believed to have been the biggest ever clubbers’ protest, using their clout and pounding beats to protest against the far right. More than 100 clubs from across the city were out to “bass away” the Alternative für Deutschland, the political party that entered the Bundestag for the first time last September, having secured 13% of the vote. Rarely are clubbers, in this case many of whom had danced through Saturday night, so visible en masse in the daylight hours in Berlin – and rarely have they been so political. On Sunday, they spread across Berlin in collaboration with other protests against a considerably smaller far-right AfD rally that was taking place in the city centre.

In recent years Berlin’s club scene has become noticeably bolder, driven not least by the threats of rising rents, investors looking to squeeze them out, and people of their parents’ generation campaigning for noise-reduction. The Clubcommission, which represents the clubs, has called on politicians to take them as seriously as they do other creative institutions such as theatre and opera – as shown last year when Berghain, the city’s most celebrated techno club, was given the same tax status as more traditionally high-culture venues. After all, the scene does bring in huge amounts of revenue for the city every year.

It’s more than about just fighting for the right to celebrate, insists the Clubcommission’s Raimund Reintjes. “It’s about having a political bearing,” he told the online platform Ze.tt. “It’s about how we structure our societal togetherness, how we solve conflicts, which values we defend – on the dancefloor, in the park and on the streets of our cities.”